Monday, 17 February 2014

Big Pharma and little e-cigarettes

One of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies has warned lawmakers that electronic cigarettes could act as a “gateway to tobacco” .

The leaked correspondence from GlaxoSmithKline, whose nicotine patches, gums and lozenges are being undermined by the burgeoning e-cigarette market, reveals the opposition from the pharmaceutical industry to impending regulation of e-cigarettes across the European Union.

The pharmaceutical industry wants medicines licences to be mandatory for e-cigarettes, as they are for nicotine products. Instead, the EU is set to introduce a system in which e-cigarette companies can opt in for medicines regulation or be regulated in a similar way to traditional cigarettes.

In the letter sent to Jane Ellison, the Health Minister, last October, GSK warned that a “two-tier nicotine system” in Europe would “seriously disadvantage proven nicotine replacement therapy products”.

This is a blatant attempt at rent-seeking by an obvious vested interest. We know that the pharmaceutical industry has been lobbying hard to hamper the growth of e-cigarettes so it comes as no surprise to find Glaxo using the tired old gateway argument.

The truth is that e-cigarettes will only "seriously disadvantage" the NRT market if they work better as quitting aids. In my experience—and the experience of countless other people—e-cigarettes are much better substitutes for smoking. If they were really a "gateway" to smoking, e-cigarettes would be good for companies like Glaxo as they would create more smokers (NRT companies need there to be smokers just as much as cigarette companies do).

Glaxo are entitled to lobby, of course, as are McNeil, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and any other seller of nicotine products. But it is strange that the 'public health' lobby portrays trivial gifts such as a crate of beer or a ticket to a flower show as major conflicts of interests while saying barely a peep about the vastly greater sums of money that flow from pharmaceutical companies like GSK to anti-smoking groups such as the Tackling Tobacco Network and Anna Gilmore's UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. Or, indeed, the World Health Organisation itself (normally I would link to this speech, but the WHO has removed it—you can read the important part in this post).

Meanwhile, tickets are still available for the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference, featuring Linda Bauld, Anna Gilmore and various other neo-prohibitionists. Sessions include the 'GSK symposium' and the 'Pfizer symposium'.

As usual, both these companies are main sponsors of the conference—apparently there is no problem having corporations that are vociferously opposed to the most promising development in smoking cessation paying for a conference about smoking cessation.

As I have said before, I'd rather see events like this funded privately than by the taxpayer, but since the 'public health' lobby is so obsessed with ad hominem attacks and 'follow the money' smears, how about a little consistency?

4 comments:

An industry that sucks all their turnover out of the state coffers and lets the taxpayer pay all their expenses, is not a "private" industry, Chris.

The parmaceutical industry should not be labelled a private industry - it is a monopoly industry. It does not supply goods to the free demand of their customers, like other industries do - rather they attack other industries' goods and customers in the media in order to force their own "goods" down peoples' throats.

It is a mafia, and their business model is to make us all sick - while pretending the aim is to make us healthy:

About Me

Writer and researcher at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blogging in a personal capacity.
Author of Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism (2015), The Art of Suppression (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion (2010) and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (2009).

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."